Meteorologist Cindy Day to keep her eyes on the sky for SaltWire Network

HALIFAX, N.S. - By joining the SaltWire Network as its chief meteorologist, Cindy Day becomes one of the few weather-people on the continent working exclusively for a newspaper organization.

“It was time for a change,” she says of her decision to leave CTV Atlantic, where she had worked for a decade. “Time to bring on some new challenges.”

The truth is the region’s most recognizable meteorologist is used to breaking new ground.

Back in 1988 when she left the Ottawa Airport to join the city’s CFRA radio station, Day became the country’s first meteorologist working full-time for a radio station.

Eight years later, she stepped out on her own with Weather by Day, a ground-breaking, multi-platform approach to delivering the weather.

Day, who was born in Bainsville, Ont., operated a 1-900 line on which people paid $1.99 for weather statements. She provided information for big private sector clients like Canadian Tire.

She also did on-air weather reports, in English and French, on eight different radio stations—all from her Ottawa townhouse.

“The landlines came right into my house,” she recalls. “I was still in bed, at five a.m. when I did my first report.”

Juggling multiple formats for a variety of audiences sounds a lot like her new posting as the in-house meteorologist for a media organization that boasts 35 print and online titles.

“It’s sort of full-circle for me,” says Day, 53.

The nature of her job is that same as it’s been for the past 19 years: “to forecast the weather and communicate that to the people of Atlantic Canada,” she says.

“The longer a meteorologist is in an area, the more they get to understand the local effects -- Mt. Thom, Les Suetes, the Wreckhouse winds in Newfoundland -- the geography and topography that influences the weather." ~ Cindy Day

That is where the similarities end.

During nine years with Global Television and a decade as CTV’s Halifax-based meteorologist, she squeezed her forecasts into tight three-minute segments on the daily news broadcasts.

“Everyday I had to skip through things that I would have loved to spend more time on,” Day says.

At SaltWire, of which the Cape Breton Post is a member, she will have the time and scope to go wide as well as deep.

Day, a published author, will write a daily weather feature for the newspapers in each region of the SaltWire Network, which spans Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador.

From a mini-studio in the company’s Halifax offices, she will produce videos that will allow her to hone in on weather in particular geographic areas, as well as to tailor the information she presents to different audiences, for example, mariners or farming communities.

Day will also maintain a considerable social media-presence, blogging about weather topics, answering questions from the public and tweeting frequently throughout the day to keep audiences up on the latest developments.

Whatever the format, she says that listeners, viewers and readers get something distinctive from a local meteorologist.

“The longer a meteorologist is in an area, the more they get to understand the local effects -- Mt. Thom, Les Suetes, the Wreckhouse winds in Newfoundland -- the geography and topography that influences the weather,” Day says.

SaltWire president and CEO Mark Lever calls her arrival a vote of confidence for the direction the company is taking, as well as a signal that, with 35 properties, SaltWire is big enough to support her brand.

Day’s presence, he added, “can’t help but help us” and represents “another part of our evolution from newspaper to multi-platform media organization.”

To underscore the latter point, Lever noted that, in 2018 SaltWire’s capital expenditures on digital innovation would surpass its capital expenditures on maintaining its print and distribution network.